Without science, no one would know the difference between zinc and copper or test tubes and glass finger puppets. Explore an invaluable discipline with today’s Groupon: for $18, you get admission for up to four to The Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley (up to a $48 value).

University of California, Berkeley’s public science center, The Lawrence Hall of Science, inspires patrons to test hypotheses and explore natural phenomena with an array of hands-on exhibits. In the knowledge emporium’s Imaginate interactive exhibit, opening February 4, budding technology savants express creative impulses by plying cutting-edge tools and producing film shorts replete with stop-motion animation. Guests can even compose tunes on sound panels, rather than doing it the old-school way—by dipping a guitar neck in paint and scrawling music across a drum skin. Interactive floor projections can host high-octane games of air hockey or dissolve into customizable fireworks displays, whereas alternate exhibits showcase different earthly wonders. In Animal Investigations, visitors view gamboling creatures such as chinchillas and iguanas alongside dinosaur artifacts. Earth and Space, alternatively, simulates stargazing with a planetarium and draws connections between satellite data and large-scale phenomena such as weather and ocean currents.